Sunset limited

It looks and feels like nearly every other Dave Robicheaux novel, but if you look a little closer, feel a little deeper, you'll find something buried there that gives this tenth entry in the acclaimed series its own luster. Yes, there's a serious bad guy whom New Iberia, Louisiana, cop Dave must confront; yes, there's the distinctive Cajun ambience and worldview surrounding the action and driving Dave to both noble gestures and bursts of anger-fueled violence; and, yes, there's coffee and beignets at New Orleans' Cafedu Monde. Burke has never shied away from using the rhythms of formula as a kind of familiar backbeat; he knows that formula attracts more readers than it repels, but he also knows how important it is in a long-running series to keep the melody line fresh. The underlying conflict in this series has always been Dave and his Cajun way of life versus the modern world; this time, the focus turns toward the past. When several incidents in New Iberia recall the decades-old crucifixion of a labor organizer, Dave vows to solve the unsolved case and force the bayou community to confront its past and expunge its collective guilt. The trail backward also takes him into his own past and that of his dead parents, forcing some very personal stock-taking on those stormy nights when the rain pelts the tin roof of Dave's bait shop: "I never underestimated the power of the rain or the potential of the dead or denied them their presence in the world." Just as we should never underestimate Burke's ability to twist formula in new directions, always spicing the literary comfort food that is genre fiction with a distinctive new tang. (Reviewed April 15, 1998)0385488424Bill Ott

After stepping into stand-alone territory with Cimmaron Rose (1997), Burke choreographs a masterful return to the lush and brooding world of volatile New Iberia Sheriff's Deputy Dave Robicheaux (Cadillac Jukebox, 1996). This tale's strength lies in breathtaking, moody descriptive passages and incisive vignettes that set time, place and character. Burke's major themes, that the past is key to the present and that money buys power, pervade this mystery. The narrative, with more twists and bounces than a fish fighting a hook, rises from the violent, unsolved murder 40 years ago of union organizer Jack Flynn. The story encompasses at least eight disparate but interlocking subplots: the crooked money behind a movie directed by Flynn's son Cisco; the hold that ex-con Swede Boxleiter has on Cisco's photojournalist sister, Megan; Willie "Cool Breeze" Broussard's theft of a mob warehouse; his wife Ida's suicide 20 years ago; the shooting of two white brothers who raped a black woman; alcoholic Lisa Terrebonne's haunted childhood; her wealthy, arrogant father's ties to Harpo Scruggs, a vicious murderer; the post-Civil War killing by freed slaves of a Terrebonne servant. Hired assassins, snitches, lawmen and FBI agents weave through the novel. Dave and his partner Detective Helen Soileau find the connections, but Dave knows that in the ongoing class war, the worst criminals wield too much influence to pay for their crimes. In rich, dense prose, Burke conjures up bizarre, believable characters who inhabit vivid, spellbinding scenes in a multifaceted, engrossing plot. $300,000 ad/promo; author tour. (June) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Burke switches publishers and moves from straightforward mystery in this story of the 40-year-old murder of a prominent labor leader, a case being reopened by his daughter. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

After Burke's Texas sabbatical in Cimarron Rose (1997), it's back to the bayous with Dave Robicheaux, struggling as usual to right an old injustice while balancing the weight of the world on his back. Forty years after their labor-organizer father was crucified against a barn wall, Pulitzer photojournalist Megan Flynn and her filmmaker brother Cisco are back in New Iberia. Despite the sweeping changes in the South over the years, time seems to have stood still for most of the cast. Minor-league house thief Willie (Cool Breeze) Broussard and his jailer, Alex Guidry, are still at each other's throats over Guidry's ``rescue'' of Breeze's late wife from Harpo Delahoussey, the brute who carried her out of Breeze's house a generation ago. Harpo is long dead, but he's been reincarnated in his nephew Harpo Scruggs, the ex-Angola gun bull who now hires out as a contract killer. Landed souse Lila Terrabonne is frozen in time by the sexual abuse she can neither name nor forget. So the news that Cisco Flynn's been joined on location by his old orphanage buddy Swede Boxleiter, and that a Chinese drug triad, determined to stabilize its position before the British relinquish Hong Kong, is reaching down to New Iberia through New Orleans gangster Ricky (the Mouse) Scarlotti, does less to change the status quo than bring it to a boil. All of this will sound excruciatingly familiar to Burke's legion of fans, and indeed the novel might have been cast out of the author's stock company: There's the brutish lawman, the seductive returning native daughter, the Hollywood poseurs, the big-city gangsters, the browbeaten black victims, the corrupt power-mongersŽand, making his way through the middle of them all, thoughtful, hamstrung Dave, who doesn't so much solve this case as watch it unfold in a series of slow-motion flashbacks. On the other hand, the characters' buried secrets, floating just beneath the surface like so many hungry gators, remind you why reading even lesser Burke is like reading lesser Faulkner. ($300,000 ad/promo campaign; author tour)

/*Starred Review*/ It looks and feels like nearly every other Dave Robicheaux novel, but if you look a little closer, feel a little deeper, you'll find something buried there that gives this tenth entry in the acclaimed series its own luster. Yes, there's a serious bad guy whom New Iberia, Louisiana, cop Dave must confront; yes, there's the distinctive Cajun ambience and worldview surrounding the action and driving Dave to both noble gestures and bursts of anger-fueled violence; and, yes, there's coffee and beignets at New Orleans' Cafedu Monde. Burke has never shied away from using the rhythms of formula as a kind of familiar backbeat; he knows that formula attracts more readers than it repels, but he also knows how important it is in a long-running series to keep the melody line fresh. The underlying conflict in this series has always been Dave and his Cajun way of life versus the modern world; this time, the focus turns toward the past. When several incidents in New Iberia recall the decades-old crucifixion of a labor organizer, Dave vows to solve the unsolved case and force the bayou community to confront its past and expunge its collective guilt. The trail backward also takes him into his own past and that of his dead parents, forcing some very personal stock-taking on those stormy nights when the rain pelts the tin roof of Dave's bait shop: "I never underestimated the power of the rain or the potential of the dead or denied them their presence in the world." Just as we should never underestimate Burke's ability to twist formula in new directions, always spicing the literary comfort food that is genre fiction with a distinctive new tang. ((Reviewed April 15, 1998)) Copyright 2000 Booklist Reviews

Burke switches publishers and moves from straightforward mystery in this story of the 40-year-old murder of a prominent labor leader, a case being reopened by his daughter. Copyright 1998 Cahners Business Information.

Cajun detective Dave Robicheaux is back, as polite as ever, after sitting out Burke's Cimarron Rose (LJ 6/15/97). Accompanying Dave is his buddy Clete and a marvelous cast of charactersAdowntrodden Cool Breeze Broussard, tortured Lila Terrebonne, slimy Harpo Scruggs, and photojournalist Megan Flynn, whose father, a labor organizer, was crucified on a barn wall 40 years ago. When Megan, still haunted by her father's unsolved murder, returns to New Iberia, she sets in motion a series of events that draws Dave into the dark, twisting relationships of these tortured characters, who are intertwined in a plot too convoluted to summarize but that bears all the hallmarks of a Burke mysteryAbloody racial sins from the past mixed with violent, inbred kinships that haunt the present. Once again, with strong and graceful prose, Burke presents a tale as dark and rich as a cup of chicory coffee. Highly recommended. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 2/15/98.]ARebecca House Stankowski, Purdue Univ. Calumet Lib., Hammond, IN Copyright 1998 Cahners Business Information.

After stepping into stand-alone territory with Cimmaron Rose (1997), Burke choreographs a masterful return to the lush and brooding world of volatile New Iberia Sheriff's Deputy Dave Robicheaux (Cadillac Jukebox, 1996). This tale's strength lies in breathtaking, moody descriptive passages and incisive vignettes that set time, place and character. Burke's major themes, that the past is key to the present and that money buys power, pervade this mystery. The narrative, with more twists and bounces than a fish fighting a hook, rises from the violent, unsolved murder 40 years ago of union organizer Jack Flynn. The story encompasses at least eight disparate but interlocking subplots: the crooked money behind a movie directed by Flynn's son Cisco; the hold that ex-con Swede Boxleiter has on Cisco's photojournalist sister, Megan; Willie "Cool Breeze" Broussard's theft of a mob warehouse; his wife Ida's suicide 20 years ago; the shooting of two white brothers who raped a black woman; alcoholic Lisa Terrebonne's haunted childhood; her wealthy, arrogant father's ties to Harpo Scruggs, a vicious murderer; the post-Civil War killing by freed slaves of a Terrebonne servant. Hired assassins, snitches, lawmen and FBI agents weave through the novel. Dave and his partner Detective Helen Soileau find the connections, but Dave knows that in the ongoing class war, the worst criminals wield too much influence to pay for their crimes. In rich, dense prose, Burke conjures up bizarre, believable characters who inhabit vivid, spellbinding scenes in a multifaceted, engrossing plot. $300,000 ad/promo; author tour. (June)